GCC and the Translation Project

This page documents how GCC development interacts with the Translation Project.

gcc.pot regeneration

gcc/po/gcc.pot and libcpp/po/cpplib.pot (the template files containing all the messages translators need to translate) are currently regenerated manually.

To regenerate gcc.pot:

• configure and build GCC with --enable-generated-files-in-srcdir (this option is only needed for 4.3);
• make gcc.pot in objdir/gcc/;
• move objdir/gcc/po/gcc.pot to srcdir/gcc/po/.

Similarly, to regenerate cpplib.pot:

• make cpplib.pot in objdir/libcpp/;
• move objdir/libcpp/po/cpplib.pot to srcdir/libcpp/po/.

This is done at the following times on mainline and active release branches:

1. Just before each release (so the file is current in releases).
2. At some time during development stage 3 or 4 (so that a snapshot can be submitted to the Translation Project and translators have a chance to catch up before the release).

gcc.pot submission to Translation Project

An i18n maintainer submits the .pot files from releases to the Translation Project.

In preparation for the first release from a new release branch, a .pot file for a snapshot should be manually submitted. Send a message to [email protected], whose subject is "gcc-version-bdate.pot" (the "b" format gets it ordered correctly before the release proper) and whose body contains the URL of the snapshot .tar.bz2 file. You need to regenerate the pot files on the branch, then wait for a new snapshot to be run containing it (or run one manually, using the command in the crontab, if you have access to the gccadmin account), before submitting the snapshot.

.po file collection

.po files (translated messages) from the translators need to be added to GCC (mainline and active release branch). They are automatically sent (gzipped) to gcc-patches, and should be committed by the i18n maintainer as and when they appear on gcc-patches. But sometimes the i18n maintainer may be busy or otherwise engaged, or a .po file may be missed, so, before each release, a check should be made for updated .po files that haven't been committed already and the most recent .po file for each language should be committed to mainline and branch. The current .po files for GCC may be found at the Translation Project site. cpplib .po files may also be found there.

.po file maintenance

.po files are maintained by the translators. Patches to them must not go directly into GCC; they need to be sent to the respective language team, indicated by the Language-Team entry in the .po file or the list of language teams. Bug reports about a translation should be forwarded to the translation team.